Chapter 204

I awoke the next morning to pounding on my door. At least, it sounded like pounding to my throbbing head. I hadn’t been hungover in so long that I had forgotten how horrific it felt.

I groaned as I tried to sit up in bed. How much wine did we have the previous night? I remembered talking about Bob’s arrest and complaining about Andrew, but the wine…

Bile came up my throat as I stood. Now, I remembered. We finished off that entire Magnum—the equivalent of two Standard bottles—in a little over two hours.

The knocking at my door exploded my head again.

“Coming!” I yelled as well as I could.

I groaned again, holding my head. I heard another groan, this one male, coming from the floor about a foot away. Noah lay, curled up on his side, on the ground, his hand covering his eyes.

“What’s going on?” he moaned.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said as I slipped my robe on. “You stay right there. I’ll get the door.”

Noah did not move or object.

I climbed over his limp form and made my way to the front door. I could smell Andrew’s scent before I even reached for the handle. It was mingled with something else—eggs and sausage that normally would make my mouth water but, with this hangover, caused my stomach to churn.

I forced back the vomit as I opened the door.

“Hello, Andrew,” I said, my voice flat from both my anger at him and the pure exhaustion.

Andrew held out his peace offering to me: a bag of sausage-and-egg biscuits from some fast-food place.

“Good morning,” he said. “I brought you breakfast.”

I eyed the bag of food for a moment, repulsed by the very idea of food. However, knowing that he was making an attempt to mend the bridge between us, I took it from him and motioned him inside.

“Is that the only reason why you came by?” I asked, trying my best to hide my distress.

“No, not exactly,” Andrew replied as he stepped inside. He ran a hand through his hair. “I came to apologize.”

I crossed my arms over my chest.

“Oh, did you?”

“Yes, I’ve been giving what you said some thought, and I realized…” He stopped for a moment and sniffed the air around me. “Have you been drinking…a lot?”

I shrugged sheepishly, then held my head as the motion sent a sharp pain through my temple. I wasn’t even sure how that was possible.

“I might have done a bit of celebrating last night,” I said.

I walked over to the dining table, where I set down the food. Andrew followed closely behind me.

“I hope that you weren’t…celebrating alone.” Andrew picked up the Magnum and eyed me when he found it empty. “It’s rarely good to drink alone, you know.”

“Of course not. I had a friend over.”

Andrew noticed Noah’s suit jacket, tie, and shirt draped over one of the chairs. He slammed the wine bottle back onto the table.

“Which ‘friend’?” he demanded.

“Well, I…”

My answer trailed off as Noah walked out of my bedroom, his shirtless torso on full display for Andrew to see. He held his head in his hand, and he looked down at the ground.

“Crystal, do you have any aspirin?” Noah asked. “My head is hurting something fierce—”

He lifted his head up, and his eyes widened when he saw Andrew. The dark expression on the Alpha King’s face caused Noah to pale, and the submissive werewolf slowly backed away.

“I’ll…just…be in here,” Noah muttered, then hid himself away in my bedroom.

I heard a low growling erupting from Andrew’s chest. His hands curled into fists, and every muscle in his body seemed to tense at once. When he turned to face me, my natural reaction was to recoil at the man who stared down at me.

“What is he doing here?” Andrew said in the lowest, fiercest voice I had ever heard come from him.

Despite my fear in that moment, I had to stand my ground.

“He was celebrating with me,” I said. “Bob’s arrest is as much his victory as it is mine. He deserves to share in the festivities.”

“Overnight? In your bedroom—and half-naked?”

Andrew shook his head and ran his hand through his hair.

“What else did you two do last night?” he demanded, his tone accusatory.

My eyes narrowed. Was he implying what I thought he was implying?

“Nothing. We drank wine and talked. That was all.”

“Then why was his shirt off?” he yelled.

I cringed in pain as my head throbbed. I really did not want to have this argument while I was hungover, but if Andrew was going to insist on not trusting me, then I was going to set him straight.

“Because he got hot,” I said.

Andrew huffed.

“Yeah, that’s likely. And where did he sleep?”

“On the floor—”

“In your room, apparently!”

“I’m so sorry that I didn’t make him sleep all alone out in the living room at 2 in the morning,” I said, my voice dripping in sarcasm.

“Do you even hear yourself?”

Andrew started pacing in front of me, so close that he nearly stepped on my foot.

“Don’t you see how this would make me feel, to see my girlfriend waking up with another man in her bedroom? Don’t you see how that might make me upset?”

I crossed my arms over my chest and dug my nails into my arms. Small, crescent indents imprinted themselves into my upper arms as my anger and frustration grew.

“How you feel? You’re the one who accused me of ruining lives last night, just because I did what you were too scared to do!”

Andrew stopped in his tracks and glared at me.

“Too scared?”

“Yes, you were so scared of losing your little girl that you wouldn’t take the first step to protect me and others from an obvious threat. Now, you’re taking that and your trust issues out on me—”

“Trust issues?” Andrew huffed again. “You think that I have trust issues?”

“Yes. If you trusted me, you wouldn’t mind me having a male friend over—”

“If you had any concept of boundaries, you would know why this—” he motioned to the clothes on the chair and back at my bedroom— “is crossing line.”

I placed my hand on my chest.

“You think that I don’t understand boundaries?”

“Yes!” Andrew exclaimed, causing my head to pound again. “That has been an issue from the very beginning. You don’t know what’s appropriate and when you’ve crossed a line, and now you’ve crossed too many—”

“So why do you stay with me?”

We stared at each other in angry silence for several minutes. Our breathing grew heavy, and the tension between us could be cut with a knife. Then Andrew turned his back on me.

“Some days, I wonder the same thing,” he muttered.

I did not say anything as he stormed out of my apartment. I did not say anything as he slammed the door behind him. I did not even say anything as Noah cautiously stepped out of my bedroom, like a child who had been spying on his parents fighting.

“Crystal,” Noah said timidly as he approached me. He placed his hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

I stared at the door. My head spun and thumped, and the acid in my stomach bubbled in irritation. My heart called out for Andrew, but my mind was too stubborn to move.

“No.”